caulfield12

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 08:40 PM) Gibbons made a mistake taking out Price too early. He was at 99 pitches and Rios had a good at-bat earlier in the game against Price and two career homers in 33 abs against him.

Would love to see what the Royals could do with a brilliant tactical manager. Moving Davis to closer with the Holland injury opened up this possibility. Of course, an injured Holland wasn't going to be effective, either. 1.01 era for Davis in 27 post season innings. 3 earned runs total. Madson already got rocked once this series, but the Royals rallied to win. Not the time to give Madson his "feel good" comeback from being injured 3-4 years moment. Inexcusable.

Between the Revere play and bring in Madson instead of Davis, that inning just might have decided the series. And it's not like Yost hasn't used Davis a few times in full two-inning saves before. Just knew that Madson wasn't going to make it through the teeth of the line-up. Not to mention Davis hasn't pitched since the first two games in the series. Even Ventura would have gone with his best pitcher there. I'm sure the excuse will be the extra insurance run made him confident to try Madson.

Ventura getting more movement with two seam and cutters and throwing out of the stretch to increase control. Blue Jays not picking up his curve...two Ks on balls way out of the strike zone. Bautista homers on a fb count and it's now 2-1.

Hard to provide clear and convincing evidence it wasn't going out. The railing isn't that close to the wall actually. 24-36 inches behind to prevent that from happening. The glove came down and hit the wall in the follow through. Optical illusion looking straight out.

Impressive for Moustakas to take a lefty of Price's quality deep. Wouldn't have happened last season. Morales almost homered the previous at-bat. Fan interference?

He sucked in the NL. We have a hr park and we're decreasing our power even more... Hamilton would actually be a pretty decent low candidate if we could consistently expect pop from RF, DH, 3b, C and at least one of the two middle infield positions. Or in Old Comiskey Park, where his range would be even more of a factor.

Cueing Balta response in 3, 2, 1...

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 06:14 PM) Can you even fathom how excited J4L and AustinIllini would have been if the Cubs just pounded the Mets in 4 games? I can fathom how depressed Fathom would have been. He was still worried about jinxing the Mets when the Mets were up two games to nothing and Game 3 was still in doubt.

Basically all he can say is our pitching staff has the foundation in place for greatness, we have a great hitter in Abreu, a really exciting/dynamic player in Eaton, an experienced closer in Robertson and about fifteen question marks. Well, other than the fact Cabrera, Danks and LaRoche will all return.

QUOTE (flavum @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 03:37 PM) I won't be right, but my gut is telling me the Jays bring out the bats the next two nights, and move on. Which would practically guarantee the Royals would destroy the AL in revenge next year. After 2016, their window starts to close pretty dramatically.

Classic moving of the goalposts and hoping fans only focus on 2005 rather than a lost decade since when the Cubs came roaring back to make the Sox largely irrelevant. With the Cardinals, Tigers before this season, Twins trending back up, Royals, Indians with Lindor/Kipnis/Brantley/Gomes/Santana and that pitching staff...other than the Brewers sucking we're hemmed in right now regionally by better run organizations. And even the Brewers continue to wallop a lot of teams in attendance despite being terrible.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 09:44 AM) Owwwww https://twitter.com/pimpino/status/657326953620336640 Gordon and Perez are the two toughest players on KC. One or both will homer. Probably Perez vs. Price.

QUOTE (shysocks @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 12:47 PM) With the context that most pitchers throw harder in the playoffs, it might be. Weather in NYC was pretty bad. Harvey's velocity was down a bit as well if I remember correctly. Other than Arrieta, wouldn't read too much into it. With Lester, he's going to be more and more erratic as his career wanes.

Wieters is the clear upgrade but likely out of price range unless they decide to go with just one major addition. Norris, Hedges, J. Castro, Lucroy, AJ Ellis/Grandal, Red Sox, Yankees, Barnes...the usual names and options will come up.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 02:35 PM) Give me a do-over on this thread. I didn't realize Salvy was a stiff or at best just another guy. My bad. Greg, use your brain and don't cave so easily when rebutted.

And if you take into consideration his age, leadership abilities, overall performance the last three or four years and especially his contract which is $7 million for five years, he's a top 3-5 catcher in the game. Gomes wasn't healthy this year for most of the season, he's probably better offensively...but you also have to take into consideration the positive effect he has on Volquez, Ventura, Herrera, etc. Having a bi-lingual catcher really helps. He's the bridge in that clubhouse between Latin America and the rest of the team, like Juan Uribe was for the Sox. The best teams have strong leadership...a coach on the field...in that position. Guys like Posey and Molina, as well as Martin once he had his career resurgence in Pitt and matured. McCann was garbage last year and is hugely overpaid. Cervelli has to prove he can do it consistently year after year. Perez has the most favorable contract in baseball, like we always hear about Sale and Q. Other than Posey, for that franchise, there's nobody who fits better (and considering salary as well, you lean towards Perez for overall value as well). Lucroy has his flaws just like Perez does, and he's relatively unproven in postseason play. Salvy also had the biggest clutch hit in the Royals' season last year against the A's in the wc game. http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/yea...ARBR/order/true In 2014 he was 6th in war. You have Lucroy, Martin, Posey, Mesoraco and Gomes ahead of him. Mesoraco looked great and fell apart last year with injury problems. http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/yea...on/c/sort/WARBR 2013, sixth again. Castro and Wellington Castillo appear here. http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/yea...on/c/sort/WARBR 2012, 8th in war. He has consistently been one of the five or six best overall catchers in the game over that period.

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-colum...le41120313.html Good story on Zobrist growing up in Kansas City and Eureka High School in Morton, IL. Didn't realize he was such a strong Christian.

Why are we trading our second best position player who is both young AND cost-controlled? Are we honestly expecting to pick up a much better option at SS, 3B or C...for Eaton alone (operating under the assumption you only trade a CFer/leadoff hitter for someone at an even more premium position)? Then we're also basically going to have to acquire a leadoff hitter from that SS we do bring in (if Alexei doesn't have his option picked up), to replace Eaton. Why would Ben Zobrist come to the White Sox (besides his local ties) when he would be leaving a history of playing with mostly playoff teams? If David Murphy's going to get $12-13 million, I wouldn't be shocked at all if someone paid Zobrist $30 million for two years. We've talked about only having $10-20 million (depending on whether we keep Alexei) to spend this off-season. Bringing in Ben Zobrist is something teams like the Yankees, Cubs, Rangers, Red Sox, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Twins, etc., will want to do, where he's that one extra piece to put them over the top. Same with the idea of him returning to the Royals, especially if they Gordon and Rios are both gone, you would be replacing three positions for next year (they'll have to dump Omar Infante at some point).

So basically, we should be blindly optimistic because Fangraphs is often wrong...and therefore, it means the White Sox are likely to be in playoff contention as a result? Actually, with those projections underrating the White Sox due to the "Herm Schneider/Cooper Effect," of keeping the team healthier by far than the median or average, you might want to argue that the odds of the White Sox having nearly 100% health next year aren't that great. (Almost everything went right, with a couple of players missing time here and there, Sale being the one who might have been affected the most in the first half because of the foot...and Nate Jones unexpectedly returned, for example.)

Twilight and Hunger Games, for the younger crowd. Harry Potter definitely has to be up there, because of the world-wide affinity for the books. The Fast & the Furious fandom, maybe not AS passionate, but it's almost unprecedented to have a movie series go so long and be so profitable...in the middle sinking to Lucas Black and nearly straight to DVD, and then come roaring back again to be one of the biggest current franchises out there. Maybe the Paul Walker tragedy is also driving interest as well. James Bond, although, once again....passionate fans? Maybe of Sean Connery and the classic Bond films. Transformers has also been incredibly successful from a profitability and box office standpoint, but the passion is more confined to the younger generation who are enthralled by all the toys and doesn't extend quite as much to adults. Even all the comic book movies (especially Marvel)...Avengers, Spider-man, Batman, fall a bit short.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Oct 22, 2015 -> 06:51 PM) I would like to see Robin with some legit talent. All of the players we brought in last year via FA and Shark were definitely paid or expected to be legit talent. Even Bonifacio was paid like it, for his utility role. Unless they're willing to trade away significant pieces, legit talent costs $75 million and up in the FA market. Or you're looking at guys like Daniel Murphy, Dexter Fowler, Parra, Pearce and Austin Jackson who may or may not (more likely) be justified in their artificially inflated "leading second tier" prices. If we signed two of those five guys, would anyone argue we had brought "legit talent" into the organization? Probably not. They would be saying we're just "being cheap" and actually increasing our downside risk by overpaying for 2nd/3rd tier talent that won't even get the team much more than 78-82 wins if everything breaks right.

Heck, Curtis Granderson was someone nearly everyone wrote off and now he's four games away from a World Series title. Plus, you have the whole Chicago connection. It's just a matter of finding the RIGHT veterans. San Diego brought in Shields, Upton and Kemp and it was a total disaster. Just throwing money at an Upton or Cespedes without knowing exactly what you're getting, their attitude/effect on the various teams they have played for, there are so many intangibles. (Yet all three of those guys have had post-season experience, unlike, say, Adam Dunn.) For example, David Robertson was a guy who almost had a pristine image, and overall it seemed his time with the NY Yankees and the expectations that brings with it...are net positives, but as a closer with a limited impact on the action, you don't have the overall opportunity to "lead" a team like a position player (Sal Perez/Alex Gordon) or starting pitcher (James Shields). There's definitely more certainty about Gordon, Heyward and Zobrist in terms of predicting exactly what you're getting...than maybe Upton, at least in my mind. That said, it would be shocking if the White Sox THIS offseason were offering any contracts over $75 million, let alone $100 million.

At least there wasn't the usual bromide about getting car-jacked or jumped in the "war zone"-ish South Side. The funniest part of this whole thing is that there are pretty good number of posters at SoxTalk who know the Cubs better in and out (both majors and minors) compared to the 80% of fans who kind of just discovered the Cubs and jumped on the bandwagon over the last 3 months or so when it became apparent they had a good shot at the playoffs again.

Might not want to include this in the season ticket renewals package...